Articles that explain context and background.
They offer clarity and understanding of the Buddhist framework, the ten fetters, and direct experience.
The self illusion is the first fetter.
The assumption that there is someone who exists independently of everything else. Someone who has a life that they direct, over which they are the decision-maker. A person who thinks, decides and acts. Someone who controls something and is in charge of themselves.
Is there a self that thinks, experiences, chooses, decides, acts?
In the past, I would have answered, “Sure, there is. It’s the self! I think, I decide, I act!”
It is I who am directing my body! I am the decider, the one who says where it goes! The supreme decision center. The pilot.
But then something happened that threw my self off track. I took a closer look.
Seeing through the self-illusion is the first step on the path to awakening – the stream-entry.
It’s the moment when it becomes clear that the self you’ve always taken yourself to be has never actually existed.
Nothing mystical, nothing lofty – just simple, obvious, and entirely real.e streamentry.
Advaita ends at the recognition of pure being – the seventh fetter.
In the ten fetters model, the journey continues: What is the subtle experience of “I am”?
Discover the difference between Advaita and the ten fetters and explore a practical exercise for investigating the eighth fetter.
This is the dialogue between Christiane and myself, taken from the Facebook group – with all spelling mistakes and forgotten words.
The concept of the ten fetters is one of the Buddha’s discoveries. He called them Samyojana – a word from the ancient Pali language that means fetter. You can find them in the Pali Canon, the earliest preserved discourses of the historical Buddha.
Restlessness is a state of insecurity and unease.
The sense of being is the assumption that I am.
